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Bitcoin dropped then spiked and dropped again in Wednesday morning trading. The pattern looked familiar to fans of America\u2019s favorite lemon-toned television family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe joked about it – it was the Bart Simpson pattern where it jumps up like this and spikes around a little bit like Bart Simpson\u2019s head,\u201d said Justin Litchfield, chief technology officer at ProChain Capital, referring to the fictional son of Homer and Marge Simpson in one of the longest-running sitcoms on television, Fox\u2019s \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been doing that a lot lately with these really sharp spikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cryptocurrencies are infamously volatile, at times posting double-digit gains and losing just as much moments later. In April, for instance, the largest cryptocurrency jumped 21% on the back of an internet hoax.<\/p>\n
In May, peak excitement over Bitcoin pushed its price up 17% in one session, just days after a flash crash. A similar pattern played out again in August when Bitcoin suddenly dropped for no apparent reason, leaving traders and speculators guessing about catalysts behind the move.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s move, which saw Bitcoin gain as much as 6% before paring losses, may have been caused by a large Tether deposit on an exchange, said Danny Kim, head of growth at SFOX.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven this data is publicly available, other market participants could have been expecting there would be a big purchase coming and tried to get ahead of the run, thus creating a short-term price increase,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin was up 2% as of 12:46 p.m. in New York to trade around $7,479. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, which tracks some of the largest digital tokens, gained as much as 4.1%.<\/p>\n